by Robin James
‘Village idiot,’ muttered Arsenio.
Carolyn, tucked into his side, an arm around him and with her hand resting on his shoulder between the straps of the bag, was so full of dread that he could feel her quaking against him. It did not have much to do with the idiot, though he had given her quite a fright; it had to do with the knife blade flattened upwards against her belly, and with the gun tucked in Arsenio’s trousers. She knew that if anything went wrong he would use that gun and maybe turn this quiet village street into a blood bath.
The two men perched on the police car had stopped talking and were staring at this couple who had appeared like phantoms in the night as they drew level. One of them called out something. The policeman emerged from the gloomy interior of the bar.
Arsenio stopped walking. He pulled Carolyn into him, pressing himself against her. ‘Kiss me,’ he said. ‘Make it for real.’
Never had lips been more unwelcome, never a kiss more unpleasant. But Carolyn did as she was told and made it appear very much for real; at least he did not thrust his tongue in her mouth.
‘Where in the name of the Holy Virgin did they spring from?’ asked the policeman of the men using his car as a bench, as he observed this lovers’ kiss.
Arsenio broke up the embrace. He smiled at the three men and started walking Carolyn on. ‘Lovely night,’ he said in English.
‘Where are you from?’ asked the policeman in Portuguese.
Stopping once more, Arsenio said in English, ‘I don’t understand.’ He shrugged, and grinned. He kissed Carolyn again briefly. ‘Good night,’ he said to the men, and walked her on.
‘These tourists today, they go everywhere,’ offered one of the men.
‘But, it’s odd, isn’t it?’ commented the policeman. ‘I can’t remember seeing a foreign car in the village tonight. Where can they be staying?’
The other man drained his glass. ‘Who knows? Who cares?’ He spat in the dust. ‘Foreigners!’
‘You’re right, Gonçalo. And their car, logically it has to be somewhere.’ He gave the retreating backs of Arsenio and Carolyn a last glance, then wandered back into the bar. ‘I’ll get us another drink.’
There were no more encounters. Another five minutes, and Carolyn and Arsenio were through the village, walking along the dark and narrow road leading into it. Ten minutes after that they rounded a bend, and there, parked on a dried mud verge and pointing towards inland Portugal, was a hired BMW with Hantash at the wheel, and Springer, Shannon and Kasar as passengers.
‘Enjoy the walk, did you now, my pretty?’ asked the Irishman as Carolyn was pushed in next to him by El Asesino.
17
Something was giving him hell in the region of his kidneys. Major Fernandez knew it had to be a piece of shrapnel, and that was scary. But his wounds went far deeper than a bit of iron in his back; he would not even begin to be on the mend until he had found Carolyn Parker-Reed and taken El Asesino.
It was just after nine a.m. on the morning after the kidnappers had rendezvoused. Fernandez was in his temporary headquarters aboard the Mirabelle, occupying Travers Bonnington’s office and the time of Gavin, the American’s secretary. He was getting somewhere – though perhaps not very far; two fortuitous events had led him to the conclusion that Arsenio and Co., with Carolyn, were no longer in Spain, but had crossed into Portugal.
The first event concerned the Harley-Davidson. The policeman who lived in the tail-end house of the village of Videferre had realized, as midnight approached, that the couple on the motor cycle who had driven up the mountain track earlier that evening had still not returned. He had been about to go to bed, but changed his mind; lovemaking was one thing – but for so long on an uncomfortable mountain? Perhaps something was wrong. It was tricky up there at night, and they may have had some sort of accident. Or perhaps there was trouble with the bike. He got on his own 49cc Honda and started up to investigate.
He found the Harley lying across a gorse bush, flattening it, just before the track veered off precipitously down the mountain. There were two crash helmets lying nearby. When his shouts into the void met with nothing but echoes of his own voice, he climbed on the Honda and hurried back to his house to put in a call to the Guardia Civil HQ in Verín. There was by now no police department in Spain which did not have a note of the number of the stolen motor cycle. The Videferre officer had neglected to take it down – he was more interested in getting permission to organize a search party – and he was sent straight back up the mountainside to get it.
Thus was Pedro Castillo’s stolen bike recovered. The second event concerned the Panda. Not being always quite as cautious as Arsenio, his fellow conspirators, when abandoning the car in the border town of Feces de Abajo, had left it blocking the entrance to a garage in a narrow little street. There was an official notice on the garage, proclaiming that cars parking there would be towed away. This, of course had not concerned Shannon when he left it there – parking near the border was difficult and they were in a hurry to get across. He even left the keys in the ignition.
The driver of the police tow truck found it odd that the Panda was unlocked and with the keys in place, and he reported this fact to the officer in charge of his station, who was very well aware that the whole country was on the lookout for a white Panda whose number was unknown. Events went speedily after that. The owner of the closed car-hire business in Carballo was contacted at his house and shown pictures of the three men known to be involved in the Carolyn kidnapping – Arsenio, Tim Shannon and Felix Springer – and had identified Arsenio. The alias El Asesino had used to hire the car was not in Interpol records; at the slightest suspicion that they might be on to a false name of his he buried it and created another. And Arsenio never, ever, used the aliases under which he kept the flats in London and Barcelona for anything but that purpose – not even to buy an air ticket.
It seemed clear that the fugitives had taken themselves and Carolyn over the border the previous evening. But there the trail ended.
Fernandez was getting good cooperation from the Guardia Civil, but in something as close to him as this, he trusted only himself to leave no stone unturned – and, as it was to turn out, he was right to step into the police action. Sipping coffee and pecking with little appetite at buttered toast that morning, he was turning over in his mind the latest information from the police as he studied a detailed map of the areas where the Harley and the Panda had been discovered. He saw something right away that perhaps the police had not put together.
‘It’s pretty clear what happened here, wouldn’t you say, Gavin?’ he asked the secretary, his finger following a road on the map.
‘Is it, sir?’ responded Gavin.
‘I would think so, yes. Some of the men walked across the border after abandoning the Panda in Feces de Abajo. Four of them, that would be. The fifth – and I’d wager my commission to the rank of private that that man was Arsenio – took Carolyn as near as he could get to the border after Videferre – here.’ His finger stabbed the map. ‘They went across the border on foot. They would have to have crossed a river – here. Then, do you see there’s a very roundabout route through Portugal to get back to São Paulo? I don’t see Arsenio stealing a car in a tiny village – too risky.’
‘And there wouldn’t be anywhere to hire one,’ put in Gavin.
‘Exactly. So he was met. The others either hired or stole a car on the Portuguese side of Feces de Abajo, on the border, and drove all the way around . . .’ – his index finger, with its clump of black hairs, traced each of the roads – ‘to pick him up.’ He sighed. ‘Then they went off God knows where.’
‘Yes, sir. And the Portuguese police?’
‘Cooperation is being sought. It will be given, naturally, but it will take a little time. Then they won’t know what car to look for.’ Fernandez finished his coffee, thinking deeply. Then he said, ‘You know, I’m hardly a detective, Gavin. I’m a major in the SBS, a Royal Marine by training. But, by heaven I’ll turn twenty-f
ive-quid whore if it leads me to Arsenio.’
Gavin blinked. ‘Yes, sir?’
‘Get the Wessex on stand-by, would you? Tell the pilot to clear the route for Feces de Abajo.’
Fernandez was in Feces de Abajo and going through customs within two hours. He found the town disagreeable – like its name, which reminded him of shit. The Guardia Civil had already checked with the officers who had been on duty at the customs post the previous evening that two people resembling Springer and Shannon had gone through at about nine, so that part was confirmed for him – not that he had any doubt. So it had been, as he had suspected, Arsenio who had taken Carolyn across.
In the Portuguese side of the town he set about a task which he doubted that the police would get around to until the next day, if at all; he began checking the car-hire places, showing the three faxed photos he had with him. At the fifth establishment he struck lucky; none of the men in the photos had hired a car personally, but someone bearing a close resemblance to Shannon had accompanied the man who had. It had been a mauve BMW hired for a week with unlimited mileage.
Fernandez hurried the information, and details of the hirer, back across the border to the Guardia Civil HQ. Within fifteen minutes of getting through to Interpol he had the confirmation he was seeking. The name on the driving licence, purportedly issued in France, and its number, was false. Who these credentials were being used by was not known, but that did not matter; the mere fact that the licence was false confirmed that that car was the one the police should seek.
Carolyn had been driven south – presumably – through Portugal in a mauve BMW whose number he had – and so would the Portuguese police have very shortly. With any luck, Arsenio and crew would not yet be abandoning the car.
They were back on the trail, but he hoped to God the Portuguese authorities did not go about the affair in a blundering fashion and risk the girl’s life.
His back was playing up badly. As he left the police headquarters he saw that there was a small clinic opposite it with X-ray facilities. He almost went in, then changed his mind. What the hell, he thought, I don’t want to know. If the shrapnel is closing in on a kidney I don’t have time to do anything about it anyway.
18
Tommy Jenkins Esquire was feeling rather pleased with himself. He had pulled off what he liked to think of as a ‘nice little number’ – and he appeared to have completely got away with it. It was not often when there was a security-van raid that the CID did not quickly find out who was behind it and arrest those responsible – that is, if they were still in the country or in territory with an extradition agreement with Britain.
But he had foiled the bastards this time, he reflected as he lounged in the early-morning sunshine on the deck of his recently acquired twenty-two-metre yacht, the Miss Molly, in Estoril harbour, a short way to the west of Lisbon. There had been only three of them involved in the raid, including himself, and it was now seven months since they had carried it out. Two and a half million quid in readies between them and they had not made a single mistake, leaving not a hint of a clue. Of course, Tommy was a number-one suspect, with form in that sort of business as long as your arm. But let them try and prove it. He was on an extended holiday, was your man, with no intention of returning in the conceivable future, a cute little cockney dolly-bird to keep him company, and nobody even had a clue where he was. Not for him the attention-drawing Costa del Sol, packed with villains and crawling with British Bill. Estoril, with its broad expanses of Atlantic-washed beach, its cosy little restaurants and its swish casino, suited him fine and dandy.
‘Nice boat,’ said a large man on the quayside loudly, admiring the smooth lines of the Miss Molly. The remark was clearly directed at Tommy – and Tommy had a well-developed suspicion of strangers. You just never knew.
‘Ta,’ he muttered, sinking deeper into the puffy cushions of his wicker deck lounger and burying his nose in a day-old Daily Mirror.
The man did not go away. ‘As a matter of fact I’ve been searching for just such a boat,’ he said.
Tommy glanced up from the newspaper suspiciously. ‘Well, she ain’t for sale,’ he said. The bloke didn’t look like Bill. And he had a bit of a funny accent.
‘Pity. She would suit me very well.’
‘Sorry, mate. I told you, I ain’t selling.’
‘I may be prepared to offer you a price you couldn’t refuse.’
Greedy little ears pricked up. The yacht had been bought cheaply for readies from a skint and desperate Englishman, a big loser in the casino. Tommy was always interested in making a profit – and one boat was much the same as another to him.
‘It’d need to be more bread than she’s worth,’ he said. ‘I’m kinda attached to ’er.’
‘I’m not short of cash,’ the man told him. ‘Can I come aboard and take a look around?’
‘Sure. Take your shoes off.’
The narrow gangway squeaked and wobbled as El Asesino made his way aboard. As Tommy got to his feet and the two men shook hands, both using false names as they introduced themselves, fifty metres along the quayside, in front of a small ice-cream stall, Springer, Shannon, Hantash and Kasar, huddled around Carolyn Parker-Reed, who had the tip of the German’s knife pressed into the back of her sweater, pricking her, watched the proceedings with interest.
They were tired. They had driven the five hundred kilometres south to Estoril through the night, taking it in turns at the wheel, snatching sleep when they could, stopping a couple of times at all-night cafés. Carolyn had hardly slept at all – she seldom could in moving cars – and she felt, and looked, wrecked.
Tommy’s dolly-bird was in a bikini below deck, making coffee in the galley. Her name was Sheila, and she was petite and shapely with straight, shoulder-length, brittle, peroxide hair. The point of her nose was a little too exaggerated and she had on too much make-up. That notwithstanding, she oozed a tartish sort of sexuality.
Villain, Arsenio thought, of Tommy as he was introduced to Sheila. And she’s your thirty-years-younger gangster’s moll. He was seldom wrong about such things. There was no sense in hanging around and chit-chatting – nor of seeing over the entire boat. It was, as he had honestly said, exactly what he was looking for.
‘I’ll take it,’ he said.
‘But we ’aven’t even . . .’
Tommy was about to say, ‘discussed the price’, as, with the silencer of Arsenio’s Smith & Wesson inches from his face, he swallowed his words.
‘I said, I’ll take it,’ Arsenio repeated. ‘And I mean take it, not pay for it.’
‘Christ,’ muttered Tommy. ‘You’re a soddin’ pirate – and there was me thinkin’ at first you might be Bill.’
Sheila’s shocked giggle was verging on hysterical. ‘Shut her up,’ Arsenio told him. ‘Gag her and tie her up – with this.’ He produced a roll of brown parcel tape from his pocket.
‘Ang on a minute, old son,’ Tommy protested. ‘You’re makin’ a cock-up. I’m one of you, ain’t I? Go and nick some honest geezer’s boat.’
Arsenio raised an eyebrow. ‘One of me? I doubt that. Now, do as I say. Tie her up.’
‘Piss off. Go on, get off my boat.’
Well, he had guts, thought Arsenio. Stepping back a pace, he put a bullet through the unhealthy roll of fat at the side of the man’s waist. It shattered the glass front of an oven behind him. As Tommy grabbed his wound, staggering and whining, Sheila screamed. Arsenio cut it off with a slap around her face which sent her reeling.
‘Another sound, girl, I’ll kill you,’ he snarled. ‘Do as I told you,’ he growled at Jenkins. ‘Or the next one won’t just scratch you.’
Blood streaming down over his trunks and the side of his thigh, naked fear on his face replacing the defiance, the English crook set about wrapping up his girlfriend in sticky tape. Scared that she might scream again, he started with her mouth, one corner of which was swelling, along with her bruised cheek.
Keeping his gun on the two of them, watching
them, Arsenio climbed the companionway until he was head and shoulders out. Waving at the quayside, he cheerily called out, ‘Hey, there. Come on aboard. Have a drink.’
Ten minutes later, Carolyn found herself shut in the small master bedroom with the trussed Sheila and the unlovely, leering Springer for company.
El Asesino was in the wheelhouse with Tommy. ‘The German with your girlfriend,’ he had just told the man, ‘happens to be partial to rape. If you don’t behave exactly as I tell you, I’ll let him do what he likes with her. And I’ll shoot you again.’
The flow of blood from Tommy’s waist had been crudely stanched with cotton wool and a bandage from the ship’s first-aid kit, and he was wearing a T-shirt. As he was starting the motors, Hantash and Kasar were casting off while Shannon, who had done most of the driving, relaxed in the Englishman’s wicker lounger. Kasar had taken off his shirt and Shannon had stripped to plain blue underpants. As the Miss Molly began to slowly slip through the waters of Estoril harbour, she looked like any other pleasure boat going out for the day with a handful of holidaymakers aboard.
‘All you needed to do, like, was be friendly, wasn’t it?’ Tommy was complaining as he steered the boat out into the Atlantic. He had recognized Carolyn – he could hardly have failed to, since her photograph took up half the front page of his yesterday’s Daily Mirror. ‘Like I said, I’m one of you. All you ’ad to do was cut me in, not bleedin’ shoot me.’